IGDATC Gamedev Meeting June 2026 - Spencer Everhart

This event is open to the public! IGDA Membership not required.

Please join us for a night of industry and community presentations! Postmortems, live demos, and talks on game design, art, marketing, audio, community, social issues, and more, given by developers from the Twin Cities and all over the world.

We also stream live on youtube.com/igdatc.

Performing Play: Player-Centered Design
When working on a game, problems inevitably arise. Sometimes, these are technical issues, glitches resulting from code that doesn't behave how we'd hoped. But what about when there are no issues and the game still isn't...quite right? Wouldn't it be nice if we could ask the game what needed to be done, why it didn't feel right? In this talk, we argue that you can: the player isn't merely consuming the game, they are a *part* of it. Drawing from performance studies, we explore how we co-create our games with our players, and how a change in perspective might unlock new and better ways of designing.

Spencer Everhart is a game designer and academic based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He holds a BFA in Game Design from the Cleveland Institute of Art and is currently working toward an MFA in Visual Communication Design at Kent State University. A jack of all trades, his interests lie in understanding the relationship between games and their players and how to create deeply meaningful experiences that players bring with them after the game ends. He specializes in user experience, accessibility, and rapid game prototyping.

Website: https://sceverhart.wixsite.com/portfolio
Instagram: instagram.com/escaliburn
Bluesky: escaliburn.bsky.social
Tumblr: spencereverhart.tumblr.com

At the beginning of our in-person meetings, we like to put a call out for game trailers, demo reels, and other short game development related announcements. Please come 15min early or contact us (Discord is best) beforehand if you can!

• 6:30: Youtube stream opens, meeting intro and monthly slides.

• 7:00: Presentations.
• After: we head to a nearby restaurant (usually Station 280) to get food/drinks and socialize!

Join us on our Discord server!

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Host or Publisher IGDA Twin Cities